


Here's the Thing

by commanderlurker (honeybee592)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-11 00:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11702865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybee592/pseuds/commanderlurker
Summary: James reflects on his relationship with Shepard and Kaidan





	Here's the Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [worstcommander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/worstcommander/gifts).



Here’s the thing: James never expected to fall in love with Commander Shepard. Sure, he’d had a massive fanboy crush on her ever since she rose to fame after that shit show on Akuze, but that was love from afar. Hero worship. Might’ve had a few inappropriate dreams about her (more than a few). Might’ve even guiltily jerked off to that ridiculous recruitment poster a couple times too. None of that was love-love. Just infatuation. Even when he actually started serving under her (and the reality of that took weeks to sink in, let alone how he'd left Earth) he didn’t think he’d fall in love. But here he is, in love. He could reach out and touch her right now, if he wanted. 

He inches his arm over and curls a strand of hair around his fingers. Shepard doesn't move but Kaidan does. He presses his forehead against the back of James’ neck and huffs, still fast asleep.

Yeah, that guy. James is in love with him, too.

He  _ definitely _ hadn’t anticipated that, not after the way they were thrown together and then apart. And especially not after James’d found out that Kaidan and Shepard were, you know, doing it on the sly. Fuck, after he’d found that out, he’d been crushed. No chance of anything happening between him and Shepard then. Not that’d he’d expected anything to happen. But a man could dream, right?

The dreams James had had...

Anyway.

Kaidan was good for Shepard, James could see that. He kept her grounded, kept her relaxed. As straight and as stiff as he was, he somehow loosened the knot that was Shepard. Shit, before he'd come back on board, James couldn’t say for sure if Shepard even knew how to relax, so wound up was she all the damn time. Couldn’t blame her though. Not when she had the fate of the galaxy resting on her shoulders. James’d done his best to share the load, had managed to take a bit of the burden, but he was only one grunt, only the new guy. He had no shared history with Shepard. And then Kaidan’d come back. And, shit, they were all about history. 

James hadn’t been jealous. Okay. Just a bit. He didn’t let himself resent Kaidan monopolising Shepard’s time or sharing her cabin. It hurt, sure, really hurt some nights, especially when he couldn't figure out just who he was jealous of. But what was he gonna do? Bust in there and join in?

Uh… about that joining in thing… Weird, man. Fucking weird. But the best thing ever. Holy hell. Dream come fucking true.

He hadn't been in love then. Nah, not then.

Ah, who was he kidding? He'd been in so deep he couldn't even see the light when he looked up. He just didn't look up, didn't want to see it for himself. Oh sure, he’d felt the niggles, the pangs like a hole in a tooth, hitting him at the most inopportune times: when Shepard bent over taking off her armour. When Kaidan ran his hand through his hair. When one of them took a hit in the field and that split second between the “uh” in his earpiece and the flash of orange back to green on his HUD. When he lay awake in bed at night listening to the hum of the Normandy, wishing he was up in the captain’s cabin with the Commander and the Major, just snuggling. He stamped down those feelings. Forced them so far down the bottle of his subconscious that he threatened to pull a muscle.

Fat load of good that did.

He had to admit it eventually, and when he did, well, it was too late. The Normandy’s epic and galaxy saving return to Earth was on the other side of a relay and James was lying in his cot regretting all the things he'd never said but wanted to say.

No matter what happened, at least he got to say goodbye.

And when he finally got to say “I love you” to both of them? The clouds parted, the sun shone, birds chirped, and angels sang. At least, that's how it felt to James. No idea what Shepard felt. She wasn't one for feelings. Or, not at least outward displays of emotion. Took James a while to get used to that.

James can count the number of times Shepard has said “I love you” to him on one hand. That doesn't mean she doesn't really love him. She does. She just says it in other ways. Like keeping his omni clean from viruses, or the way she tops up the coffee machine before bed so it's ready when James gets back from his morning run, or the way a mysterious care package reaches him even when he's at the ass end of the galaxy and supposedly on covert, top secret missions.

Kaidan at least said “I know” when James had told him he loved him.

He's freer with the verbal and written I love yous, signing off voice messages with those three words, ending emails with ubiquitous ‘x’. Hearing him say it still makes James’s heart go funny, even after all these years.

After all these years. Shit. Feels good to say it, to think it.

For a long time--still, when he's in the self-doubting mood--James thought he’d never be up to Shepard or Kaidan’s standard. How could he be? He was the new boy, the grunt, only got on board the Normandy in the first place through luck (though perhaps, if the rumours were true, Shepard and Anderson had finagled his placement before the Reapers hit Earth. Still, only luck that he was with Kaidan at the time. Only luck that that stoic, uptight son-of-a-bitch who said he used to know Shepard knew enough to drag James’ ass to the Normandy). He felt like third wheel for a long time. No denying it, he  _ was  _ the third wheel. But even tricycles are a valid form of transportation. Wait… uh. Anyway, took him a while before he allowed himself to accept his place, to accept that he was good enough to be one of them. Earning that N7 badge sure helped.

So here he is, in love with the first and second human spectres, the Saviors of the Galaxy (twice, three times, depending on how you count), the Alliance’s most famous and decorated N7 and biotic combo. Shepard and Kaidan might be all those things, but to James, here, now, in the soft blue light of the room they all shared, they are James’ and he loves them. 


End file.
